However you currently feel about it, artificial intelligence (AI) appears to be here to stay. Perhaps this is nowhere more true than in legal practice, where generative AI and AI tools have already made their presence known in both positive and negative ways. As a result, a T14 law school has taken steps to modify its higher education practices to better prepare law students for careers that include, but don’t depend on, the use of AI.
In “Rethinking Legal Education in the AI Era,” an AI Strategy Statement released on July 9, 2026, the University of Chicago Law School and Dean Adam Chilton lay out a detailed explanation of new AI-related policies developed by the school’s AI committee over the past three years. While acknowledging that its students must be trained in the ethical use of AI as legal technology, both in the classroom and beyond, UChicago Law promises to continue emphasizing critical thinking and professional judgment as its core values. Its AI-resilient pedagogy and assessment will teach them “to think with, without, and about AI.”
The educational blueprint presented entails numerous changes to 1L classes, including the prohibition of electronic devices (!) in the classroom, exams taken without online access, and the continued requirement for legal research writing (LRW) without AI as a foundation. For upper-level classes, professors will conduct an oral discussion with each student on their substantial research papers (SRPs), confirming that they’re familiar with the work they’ve submitted. AI labs will instruct future attorneys on how to use AI and create tools to better prepare them for the field they’re entering.
To guide this new era, UChicago Law has committed to three principles: each syllabus will provide absolute AI policy transparency; the school and its faculty will stay up to date on AI’s ongoing evolution; and an AI advisory council will conduct constant policy reconsideration. It also intends to focus on three themes addressing how to embrace AI as a necessity while maintaining that people remain the most important part of the legal profession.
A Wary Embrace, Indeed
After the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022 and its immediate embrace by the legal world, UChicago Law established a committee to gauge the new technology’s impact and how the school should respond. Given its stature as a perennial T14 school, the statement it released is likely to cause ripples throughout the legal education community.
While drafting new policies, UChicago Law has insisted that it will continue to focus on ensuring its students are taught to “think critically, strategically, and independently without relying on AI,” while also recognizing that the technology cannot be ignored. This included a strategic vision based on three themes: developing AI-resilient pedagogy and assessment; elevating the “essential human” skills that distinguish excellent lawyers; and teaching the responsible, effective, and ethical use of AI. This approach accepts that AI is part of the legal profession and students need to both learn and use it, but also emphasizes that the other critical skills taught in law school are much more important.
The school also purchased licenses for popular legal AI tools and added them to its law clinics, but still wants to make sure students prioritize their own skills. While AI can be a performance enhancer, it shouldn’t be the engine that drives the vehicle. To drive this point home, UChicago Law plans to make sure that first-year law students won’t miss the lesson.
Wait, No Laptop? Really?!
Incoming UChicago Law first-year students may have had their expectations shaken a bit (or a lot) by the school’s statement. To ensure the development of critical thinking, legal writing skills, and strategic judgment in the first year, UChicago Law’s new policy for 1L core courses, such as Civil Procedure, Torts, and Elements of the Law, bans the use of laptops, tablets, and phones in classrooms and lecture halls. An exception is possible for a class “scribe” to take notes for the class for later distribution. In addition, all exams will be administered with no online access permitted.
For Legal Research and Writing (LRW) classes, the school plans to balance the need to establish foundational writing without AI with the requirement to prepare students for AI use during summer internships. Layers of AI may be added to enhance the student’s own writing as they progress.
For upper-level and elective 1L classes, the focus will shift to guidance and experimentation with AI tools. Rather than teaching them to become adept with certain chatbots or tools that may be outdated by the time they graduate, they’ll learn how to use them as study aids, practice problem creators, and how to create tools of their own. While the electronic device ban in classrooms will remain the default rule, professors have more leeway to suspend it for appropriate use.
In the Digital Age, Are Papers Still Chased?
There are changes afoot for 2Ls and 3Ls as well. The biggest is perhaps the alteration made to upper-level writing requirements and SRPs. After submitting their SRP, all students are required to have an oral discussion with their professor (either one-on-one or in a classroom setting) to demonstrate their familiarity with and expertise in their work. While a valuable tool for teaching oral advocacy, it’s also a safeguard against students substituting AI for the research and writing skills that their SRP should display. The school also suggests that upper-level writing classes should include classroom-based writing.
As for its law clinics, UChicago Law’s new approach includes acquiring the licenses to the most popular AI legal tools currently available. Clinics allow students to engage in transactional lawyering, provide access to justice for those who require legal aid, and offer the opportunity to learn how to work with and without AI. Adding the tools and seeing how students succeed and fail with them will also allow the school to further develop and hone its policies.
Ignoring the AI elephant in the room isn’t feasible. UChicago Law’s proactive and aggressive changes are intended to smooth the uneasy relationship between AI and the law. It will be interesting to see if other top law schools closely follow suit or blaze a different path. The complete University of Chicago Law School AI Strategy Statement can be found here.
